Mariupol evacuees arrive in Donetsk

More than 50 civilians were evacuated on Sunday from Mariupol's Azovstal steel works in a convoy with vehicles bearing United Nations symbols, signalling a deal had been struck to ease the ordeal of the most destructive siege in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The siege of Mariupol has turned the port city into a wasteland with an unknown death toll and thousands trying to survive without water, sanitation or food.

The city is under Russian control but some fighters and civilians remain holed up in the Azovstal works - a vast Soviet-era plant founded under Josef Stalin and designed with a labyrinth of bunkers and tunnels to withstand attack.

In one of the first major signs of an evacuation deal, a group of around 40 civilians arrived on Sunday at a temporary accommodation centre after leaving the area around the Azovstal plant.

They arrived in the village of Bezimenne in the Russian-backed Donetsk Region, around 30km east of Mariupol, with Ukrainian number plates in a convoy with Russian forces and vehicles with United Nations symbols.

Later, another group, numbering around 14 people, arrived at the accommodation centre.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said after meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Thursday that intense discussions were under way to enable the evacuation of Azovstal.